Month: February 2013

I know Woody Holliman from FlyWheel Design in Durham, NC. Truth be told, I’d sent him some letters back in the day trying to get hired. At the time, his firm was looking for a torn-paper look to their designs, and that didn’t interest me in the least. Today, Woody came to talk to us as a representative of Meredith College, and to discuss ways of getting our students hired.

This even really turned out well. We had several classes show, and he spoke not so much about him, as much as he talked about what our students could do to succeed. Two excellent points:

Send them a Love Letter. The feeling is, you should throw out as many letters to as many people at as many companies as possible. This will not work. Your best bet is to find a few companies you like and send them a love letter. Let them know what you like about their work, what you like about their business, stalk them a bit through social media and find out what things you might have in common. Then craft your letter and spellcheck it. Then spellcheck it again and spellcheck it again. Then have someone else proof it. Send the letter in the mail with a nice resume and a link to your online portfolio. After 4 mailing days, consider calling them and simply inquire if they happened to receive the letter. Offer to take them for an iced coffee and ask if they might consider looking at your print portfolio and possibly suggesting another location if they aren’t hiring.

Look Like You Already Work There. When hiring a new employee, most agencies don’t want to have to train someone. Secondly, they have a brand with a solid look and feel and they don’t want to have to get you up to speed for too long. If you’re already about to send a love letter, consider adding some pieces to your portfolio which are similar to the kind of work that they do. If you already look like you belong there, it might be a no-brainer for them to hire you. Alternately, if it looks like you went on their website and copied their designs, it will look really bad. Get an idea of the kind of work they do, and feel free to take inspiration from it, but don’t plagiarize.

We were very pleased with the materials shown and the presentation skills.

On Wednesday, February 13th, Tyler Dockery gave an hour-long discussion and hands-on training on responsive web design to the FDA.

GDA Lecture: Responsive Web Design, a Hands-on Approach

The talk outlined the basics of responsive design, how it differed from adaptive design, and was concluded with a hands-on demonstration in which students could create their own responsive page from a template [ code provided below ].

The Mac Lab was filled and several students remained without computers to discuss the materials and observe the lecture. Q&A after the session covered numerous topics, such as how to use media calls in CSS to reconfigure your responsive pages, and how to organize your content for mobile devices.

He provided two files for the discussion:

First, a word document outlining the basics of responsive design, and giving some great links to websites which students can use to learn more of responsive design basics. The DocX can be downloaded below:

Second, a Dreamweaver file with a basic website already coded. Additional CSS has been added BELOW the HTML which will make the page adapt if the screen size becomes 600px or smaller. Cut the commented CSS and add it within the bottom of the <style> tag.

As this version of wordpress will NOT allow .html files to be uploaded, AND .zip files with .html files insider are also banned, the entire source code will be posted below for those interested.

If you’re interested in learning more about Responsive Web Design, please feel free to come and visit with me in my office, 321C in the ETB building. If you enjoyed this or any presentations, please let us know and let us know what you’d like us to present on in the future!